Part of the issue may be that DC launched Young Animals at roughly the same time, as well as the Hanna Barbara line, which is a lot of similar new books for the market to bear. Add to it that Gerard Way was all over the press talking about how Young Animals was intended to be like Vertigo used to be, which raised the question…then what is the point of keeping Vertigo?

In general I think comics imprints and companies could use some lessons in branding. I go to the LCS on Wednesday and outside of the Marvel/DC heroes I see a hundred books that all look vaguely similar.

It was originally meant to be 8 issues so I don’t know how it ended up being 12.
I feel like 12 was a good size for it as well. It didn’t seem truncated to me in anyway.

I’ve listened to the interview from Tom King on it. It’s very complicated.

He wanted to do it as a comic but nobody bit, so then he moved into writing prose and switched it into a novel which he’d partly written. Then Vertigo became interested and it went back to being a comic, it was meant as an ongoing with a finite end at some point, they decided to do it in volumes with 12 issues being the first one.

He and Gerards are now making bigger waves on Batman so I think the idea is they can bring across a bigger audience after people pick up the trades when it returns.

I agree with Roberts that Vertigo is still very strong creatively but from an organisational aspect they are a mess. They have canceled so many books abruptly (and I know economically the sales are pathetic) you begin to lose faith. Unfollow was a really great book and had rave reviews but sold like shit. Their internally competing lines mean they give them no publicity even in their own house ads (I picked up the terrible selling Sandman at issue 8 after they did a publicity blitz with quotes from Alan Moore and others on how great it was).

It seems like they just see it as an IP farm, we may one day see the proper Unfollow story but on a TV channel like iZombie, which has lasted way longer than the comic.

I think Vertigo messed up with the $3.99 price point. You can get away with it, to some extent, on a creator driven imprint (like Young Animals or Wildstorm), or where there’s name recognition (like the Hanna Barbara line - although that’s struggling too, it seems); but on a line, perceived to be way passed its prime and without any big name creators, I think it was a self inflicted wound. I know there are Vertigo books I would have tried but the price was off putting.

And, I’m still pissed about American Vampire being left hanging like this.

On Snyder, I don’t know if anyone posted it here, but the next volume of Wytches won’t be published as individual issues; it’s being serialized in the Image+ magazine from August, along with a new Ed Piskor series:

The last couple of volumes didn’t grip me, albeit one of them was a bunch of short stories.

The problem is you’ve those storming volumes 1-5 - with the time jumps being one of the best things about them.

Vol 6 was the anthology.

Vol 7-8 was Second Cycle, which ended up the as the middle act, clearly going somewhere - but it needs that to be supplied and it hasn’t, especially as Vol 9, if it ever gets released is a trade edition of Anthology 2, so it’ll be Vol 10 that actually continues it all.

If it concluded well, Vertigo would have a series they could sell for years, while it’s in limbo they don’t.

I don’t really know about the legalities of it all but that whole line smacks of trademark retention. Russell had amazing acclaim for his Flintstones run which once again sold like shit. They are replacing it with him on Snagglepuss. In no reality does Snagglepuss sell more copies than Flintstones.

I think the increased velocity you felt was a direct result of them wanting to just wrap it up and move on to something else. But, as the years continue to tick by with no resolution, it’s almost like they just don’t care anymore.

I don’t really know about the legalities of it all but that whole line smacks of trademark retention. Russell had amazing acclaim for his Flintstones run which once again sold like shit. They are replacing it with him on Snagglepuss. In no reality does Snagglepuss sell more copies than Flintstones.

On Snyder, I don’t know if anyone posted it here, but the next volume of Wytches won’t be published as individual issues; it’s being serialized in the Image+ magazine from August, along with a new Ed Piskor series:

You’d think that with some of these things they’d just have some belief in the product; ok it’s not selling well now but this a really good piece of work and it deserves better treatment. In time people will buy the collected editions and word will get round, it’s too good not to.

Their OMAC was so damn fun, and apparently their plans for a second arc would have been called “Escape From Kafka Island” - reintroducing Multi-Killer and General Kafka.

Their Forever People is also fun, with strong characters, but less coherent. Most of it is trying to minimize damage from Venditti’s terrible as hell “Godhead” event. It’s like a life boat for New Gods concepts that are being shuffled around in that and it’s not very subtle about it.